~ Thoughts … deep and otherwise

Transparency, or blind foolishness

The website Defense One called it an “extraordinary briefing” for reporters.

Indeed.

Central Command, which rides herd on the coalition offensive against the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), called a press conference Thursday to reveal a massive plan involving up to 12 Iraqi brigades (that’s as many as 25,000 ground troops). Their mission? Liberate the key Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS control. Those brigades are being trained by U.S. soldiers.

Also involved will be a Heinz 57 assembly of Mosul police officers, special-operations units from Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service, and tribal forces – all U.S.-trained.

In addition, three Peshmerga brigades of respected Kurdish fighters in the high country of northern Iraq will attack from the north.

The Pentagon is looking at launching the offensive in April or May in advance of the Muslim high holy days of Ramadan.

So, we know what is being prepared.

We know who is going to be involved.

We have a rough idea of when and where the assault will take place.

And we have a broad outline of how it will be carried out.

Is there anything else, short of detailed tactical plans, that we can provide ISIS in our effort to be transparent here?

I’m pretty sure I would be labeled “old school.” Nevertheless, I ask: Since when it is wise to tell the adversary all about how we plan to beat him?

Savvy businessman don’t do it that way. Nor do football coaches. I’m pretty sure that even a barbarian as dense as Alaric the First and his Visigoths didn’t broadcast the sack of Rome in 410 A.D before it occurred. In fact, such an utterance in World War II, Korea, Vietnam or during Operation Desert Storm would have garnered you a court martial and a trial on a charge of high treason.

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton summed up quite well the confusion among most U.S. armed forces veterans.

However, there’s no mystery to it at all. The current, Obama-appointed leadership at the Pentagon estimates that ISIS forces in Mosul number only about 2,000 fighters. President Obama and his minions have decided that ISIS is declining and is on its way out as a force to be reckoned with. (Uh-huh, and don’t forget the president’s call in May for an end to the undeclared war against al-Qaeda because that terrorist pride of lions has fractured into various splinter groups spread across several nations.)

So, what is the overriding Obama strategy for Mosul? Same as it always has been – to lead from behind. He hopes that announcing this “massive” Iraqi combat assault two to three months in advance will motivate ISIS forces to cower and run.

And perhaps they will, rallying with their kind in the desolate and miserable Syrian plain of Dabiq. There, as Atlantic Magazine’s Graeme Wood has postulated, every good radical Muslim hopes to help light the fuse to the powder keg of Armageddon. Their goal is: total Sharia Law, or total obliteration of this sinful, unrepentant, self-centered planet.

Adolf Hitler would have loved these guys.

If ISIS and their ilk want to “dominate the world, or else,” let’s help them achieve the “or else.” Let’s drop a few good ol’ U.S. bunker-busters on their huddled masses so they can be the first ones to leave the planet behind. Then, the rest of us can get on with our lives of quiet, non-lethal, de jure desperation.